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HU'S ON FIRST
By James Sherman
(We take you now to the Oval Office.)
George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The Chinaman!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.
George: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader
of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the
Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of
China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk.
And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China.
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the
U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.
(Condi picks up the phone.)
Condi: Rice, here.
George: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too. Maybe we
should send some to the guy in China. And the Middle East. Can you
get Chinese food in the Middle East?
*****
Is Bush 666?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
George 6
Walker 6
Putsch 6
*****
But He Is A Moron
By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org
11-25-2002
Francoise Ducros, director of communications for Canada's Prime
Minister Jean Chretien, said in a private conversation that Mr. Bush
was a moron for the way he pushed his obsession over Iraq at a NATO
meeting in Prague that had other, important issues to treat. Most
informed people on the planet would classify her observation in about
the same category as "sugary cereal makes a terrible breakfast," but
it is so rare to hear even the slightest truth expressed regarding
America's pathetic chief executive that a bit of a flap has arisen.
This happened only because her private remark was reported by a
newspaper founded by Canadian press baron, Conrad Black, a man who
gave up his citizenship in order to accept membership in Britain's
House of Lords, something which enables him to pontificate in neo-
gothic halls while costumed in a sweeping scarlet robe topped with
puffs of white fluff. But his good works in Canada continue behind
him, and the absurdly-biased paper he founded, The National Post,
goes right on doing its duty - in this case, the reporting of an
unmistakably-private remark just to embarrass Canada's Liberal Prime
Minister.
I don't know what it is about the "neocon" crowd, perhaps it is their
affinity with the flaky religious right, perhaps it is stunted
emotional development, but they have this urge to crawl about
sniffing into the private affairs of others. They sniff around
bathroom stalls, under beds, or into the soiled contents of laundry
hampers on their quest for suitable political material - the absurd
impeachment of President Clinton being the century's greatest product
of their strange urge.
A stain on a dress, a few weasel-words by a President, naturally
enough, anxious to avoid embarrassment, and voila, you spend a
hundred million dollars, tie up an entire nation for months, and
publish as official government documents, available for any young
child to read, words and descriptions best suited to the fiction
genre known as bodice-rippers.
One of Canada's feeble, American-neocon wannabes, summoning every
ounce of authority his pinkish, plump, baby face is capable of
displaying (ever notice how many of these people resemble plump
babies? Gingrich, Falwell, Robertson, Limbaugh, etc. Likely there's a
solid clue here to some unknown syndrome or genetic abnormality.)
demanded an apology and the dismissal of Ms. Ducros. But Prime
Minister Chretien is made of sterner stuff. He was photographed in
Parliament with his hand covering a yawn.
To my mind these events add considerable force to arguments for
women's greater involvement in politics. Women have demonstrated a
superior ability to recognize the embarrassing nakedness of a very
eccentric emperor.
Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, daughter of a former prime
minister, last year made the private observation at a dinner in
America that Bush "is totally an asshole." This, again publicized
by "neocons," of course, involved precisely the word Bush himself had
used himself during his election campaign to describe, not a
politician who threatened the world's peace, but a newspaper reporter
whose honesty he resented. Bush refused to apologize for what was a
private remark made before a live microphone. Tanaka's remark, too,
was private, but she was soon forced out of the Japanese government.
German Justice Minister, Herta Dubler-Gmelin, another tough, astute
woman, made the observation recently that Bush's approach to avoiding
domestic difficulties through war had previously been tried by
Hitler. Students of history will know that her statement was no more
than dry fact, but to this day Washington's Baby-Face-in-Chief
refuses even to meet with the German Chancellor, a pathetic display
for a man holding such power. Any politician with some effective
intelligence would allow the matter to pass, calling upon a quality
variously called grace or largesse or class, but don't waste your
time looking for that quality in America's "neocon" crowd.
Bush's petulance over an inconsequential remark highlights why we now
are made to orbit dangerously around Iraq, a fairly inconsequential
country, already beaten-down by war and embargo. Saddam embarrassed
Dad, and that's reason enough to endanger, quite literally, the
future of world peace. We are to have Clinton's impeachment re-staged
on an epic scale and set to Wagnerian music drenched with blood and
mysticism.
The obsession is particularly distressing acted out against a
background of revelations that North Korea, a bizarre regime if ever
there was one, likely has a couple of atomic bombs and certainly has
a very active program for manufacturing fissile material. North Korea
also has missiles that can reach several major population centers in
Asia.
The obsession is acted out, too, against a background of explosive
instability in the Middle East. Mr. Bush simply ignores America's
immense obligations there. He refuses to see that his Teutonic-
knights war on terror, viewed by many as hopelessly infected with
anti-Muslim prejudice, only makes a deadly situation more deadly.
Meanwhile, America busies herself deploying immense resources to swat
a fly.
Moron, indeed.
John Chuckman encourages your comments: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*****
New World Odor
By Bridget Gibson
Online Journal Contributing Writer
The master's finest tool was never the weapon that kept his slaves in
submission. Nor was it the one that he provided to the slaves to do
his bidding. It is, and has always been, one that will convince
slaves they are free in a system of suppression.
Patrick Barry
November 28, 2002 - Futuristic fiction writers have long tried to
envision a world in which no one can make even ordinary motions that
are not tracked and watched and catalogued by some shadowy "Big
Brother" government. What those writers could not have known is how
or why such an intrusive monster would manifest itself into our
American society without so much as a blink from most of the
citizenry.
The Bush administration now brings the second half of its tenure to a
thunderous applause of flag waving patriotism with the unveiling of
the "Total Information Awareness" program. This wonderful new product
line will undoubtedly become a household name in a very short while
with its astounding powers to snoop and pry into the most mundane of
corners. Santa's list merely consisted of whether you were naughty or
nice, but John Poindexter wants his list to have all of the details.
Details from all of your communications (telephone calls, emails and
internet web searches), banking, credit card purchases,
prescriptions, gun purchases, fertilizer purchases, fuel purchases,
school records, medical records, travel history and driver's license
applications will be catalogued and available to government officials
and be placed in a supercomputer data bank for analysis and threat
assessment purposes.
Will Act II be for the Internal Revenue Service to be placed in the
loop for "investigative" purposes also? Will Act III be for the
continued privatization of our government and the placement of well-
positioned corporations into the loop to better "market" and put
their "new" products into your homes?
Even those of you that read these words and believe that our
government has the right to remove your privacy and open your
curtains and peer into your home and personal activities should take
heed. I was raised with the words of my parents ringing in my
ears: "You should live your life as though any moment of it could be
printed on the front page of a newspaper." Well, thus far my life has
not drawn that type of attention, but why would I want anyone knowing
all of my habits?
Gone are the carefree days when a search warrant was a necessary
invitation for the police to come into your home. I have bid farewell
to the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights! With a longing look over
my shoulder at the past as we knew it and the future, I must bravely
understand that all my words of dissent may become fodder for
the "data analysts" that will then piece together my grocery habits
and attempt to discern my allegiance to the new fuhrer, George Bush.
I am certain that many of you reading my words today will think that
I have gone over the top. I could only wish that were so. Our
new "Big Brother" comes complete with one of the spookiest of the
Iran-Contra spooks at its head: John Poindexter.
For those with short memories, I can only say that our nation's
inability to learn from its own history has doomed us to repeat our
worst mistakes. The Reagan Era White House email problems began with
the Iran-Contra scandal and the fact that shortly before hearings on
the scandal were to begin, two figures at the center of the scandal,
Colonel Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter, secretly deleted
thousands of email messages related to the scandal. A backup taping
system saved the messages and more than 7 million others created
during the Reagan presidency. John Poindexter was tried and found
guilty of lying to Congress and subsequently had his conviction
overturned on a technicality.
I cannot trust the current administration to safeguard our
Constitution and am witnessing the savaging of our Bill of Rights. I
can only ask that you, my fellow citizens, take heed and bear
witness, to speak out through all of our differences and help stop
the madness.
*****
Joe Conason's Journal
Salon.com
Regarding Henry: Will he explain his job for Unocal when the oil
giant was cozying up to the Taliban?
Dec. 3, 2002 | Oh, Henry
As a New Yorker who wants a full, fair and unsparing probe of 9/11,
I'm not moving on just yet from the absurd appointment of Henry
Kissinger to chair the new "independent commission." Neither is the
New York Times editorial board, whose latest salvo described
Kissinger's insouciance about his conflict of interests as "quaint."
Quaint must be the polite way to say stunningly arrogant. But the
wily Kissinger is probably quite right to brush off the halfhearted
gnawing of the press corps, whose appetite for scandal has diminished
markedly since the advent of the Bush administration. They're already
ignoring information about Kissinger that probably merits further
exploration.
Two years ago, the appointment of an "independent" investigator with
business ties to one of the president's most generous political
contributors – who also happens to have made the president a
multimillionaire -- would have drawn angry snarls. But the fact that
Kissinger sits on the European board of Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst,
the investment firm of Bush benefactor Thomas O. Hicks, is apparently
just business as usual. Tight-lipped Henry doesn't even have to tell
how much he's being paid.
Evidently Kissinger's long-standing connections with oil firms doing
business in the Gulf region are of no concern, either. Two petroleum
companies were mentioned in the Times the other day, but nobody dared
ask the man whether he still works for them or any other oil-related
businesses.
What about Unocal? In 1995, Kissinger showed up for the signing
ceremony in New York that sealed Unocal's agreement to build a $2
billion, 1,000-mile pipeline from the gas fields of Turkmenistan
through Afghanistan to Pakistan. The torturous negotiations leading
to that aborted deal -- including Kissinger's cameo -- are fully
described in Chapter 12 of "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil &
Fundamentalism in Central Asia," by Ahmed Rashid, an authoritative
journalist who now works for the Wall Street Journal. Unocal
eventually withdrew from Turkmenistan, amid charges of bribery and
influence-peddling. (Working for the rival bidder at the time was
Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, director of the kingdom's intelligence
agency.)
What makes that old story interesting again is the role of Unocal's
partner, described in the Los Angeles Times in May 1998 as "a small
and mysterious Saudi company called Delta Oil Co. Ltd." At the time,
Unocal and Delta were cultivating the friendly leaders of the Taliban
to win approval for their pipeline.
Incidentally, that L.A. Times story gave a detailed account of the
pipeline fiasco and the nasty lawsuit that followed. Its author was
James Risen -- now an investigative reporter at the New York Times.
In November 2001, the Washington Post examined the history of the
Unocal pipeline in a story headlined "How Afghanistan Went Unlisted
as Terrorist Sponsor." That story also mentioned Kissinger's role:
"Unocal appealed to the Taliban and received assurances that it would
support a $4.5 billion project rivaling the trans-Alaska pipeline.
The deal promised to be a boon for the Taliban, which could realize
$100 million a year in transit fees.
"But Unocal also needed U.S. backing. To secure critical financing
from agencies such as the World Bank, it needed the State Department
to formally recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's government.
"Unocal hired former State Department insiders: former secretary of
state Henry A. Kissinger, former special U.S. ambassador John J.
Maresca and Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.
"Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born former Reagan State Department
adviser on Afghanistan, entered the picture as a consultant for a
Boston group hired by Unocal. Khalilzad and Oakley had dual roles
during this period because the State Department also sought their
advice. Khalilzad is now one of President Bush's top advisers on
Afghanistan."
Which makes me wonder whether Kissinger should be asking questions --
or answering them.
***
Before he became a vaunted White House turncoat, DiIulio openly
criticized the Bush administration for its lack of compassion.
Dec. 4, 2002
Before DiIulio's "darkness at noon"
If the Washington press corps were able to even feign an interest in
policy rather than personalities, they could read John DiIulio's
critique of "compassionate conservatism," which appeared in the
Philadelphia Inquirer last Sunday. That was before Monday's "Darkness
at Noon" -- when Ari Fleischer told reporters at the midday briefing
that DiIulio's devastating portrait of domestic policymaking by Karl
Rove was "baseless and groundless," only to be followed within hours
by DiIulio himself abjectly agreeing that his remarks
were "groundless and baseless."
The DiIulio Op-Ed in the Inquirer isn't gossipy and doesn't include
cute nicknames like "Mayberry Machiavelli." It's concerned with the
Bush administration's failure to fulfill the president's campaign
promises to the poor. DiIulio, a devout Catholic, respected academic
and serious man, took those promises seriously.
"But neither before Sept. 11 nor since," the former White House
staffer writes of Bush, "has his noble, compassionate conservative
vision been matched by equally compassionate domestic policies and
social welfare initiatives."
What is missing from the Bush agenda? Despite his quaking bout of
cowardice, DiIulio has ideas that deserve discussion. His dissent is
particularly valuable at a time when the economic downturn is hurting
working and poor families that had only begun to prosper from the now-
exploded boom.
He makes a compelling case for seven immediate reforms, from
guaranteeing health insurance for every American child to emergency
revenue sharing with the nation's financially desperate cities. Tom
DeLay and Trent Lott aren't interested -- and neither is George W.
Bush. So maybe DiIulio should take back the vital organs he forfeited
the other day, take a deep breath -- and admit that "compassionate
conservatism" was a campaign chimera.
*****
White House Loosens Clean Air Rules
Fri Nov 22, 2002
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration on Friday eased clean air
rules to allow utilities, refineries and manufacturers to avoid
having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment when they
modernize their plants.
The long-awaited regulation issued by the Environmental Protection
agency was immediately attacked by environmentalists, state air
quality regulators and attorneys general in several Northeast state
who promised a lawsuit to try to reverse the action.
But EPA Administrator Christie Whitman rejected critics' claims that
the changes would produce dirtier air, saying in a statement they
would encourage emission reductions by providing utilities and
refinery operators new flexibility.
She said the old program has "deterred companies from implementing
projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air
pollution."
A group of Northeastern states, led by New York and Connecticut, said
they planned to file suit challenging the changes. In New York,
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused the administration of
attacking the Clean Air Act with rules that would further degrade air
quality in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states downwind from industrial
plants.
"The Bush administration is again putting the financial interests of
the oil, gas and coal companies above the public's right to breathe
clean air," he said.
The rule changes, which have been a top priority of the White House,
are aimed at making it easier for utilities and refinery operators to
change operations and expand production without installing new
emission controls.
Industry has argued that the old EPA regulations known as "New Source
Review" under the Clean Air Act have hindered operation and prevented
efficiency improvements.
The new EPA regulation will allow industry to:
_Set higher limits for the amount of pollution that can be released
by calculating emissions on a plant-wide basis rather than for
individual pieces of equipment.
_Rely on the highest historical pollution levels during the past
decade when figuring whether a facility's overall pollution increase
requires new controls.
_Avoid having to update pollution controls if there has already been
a government review of existing ones within the past 10 years.
_Exempt increased output of secondary contaminants that result from
new pollution controls for other emissions.
In addition, the agency is proposing a new way of defining what
constitutes "routine maintenance, repair and replacement" - key
language that helps determine when the regulations should kick in and
is particularly important for aging coal-fired power plants.
The EPA plans to grant power plants, factories and refineries an
annual "allowance" for maintenance. Only when expenditures rise above
that allowance would an owner or operator have to install new
pollution control equipment. Replacement of existing equipment would
be considered maintenance.
The administration said the new maintenance treatment "will offer
facilities greater flexibility to improve and modernize their
operations in ways that will reduce energy use and air pollution."
However, Vickie Patton, an attorney with Environmental Defense, said
the changes amount to "a sweeping and unprecedented erosion of state
and local power to protect the public health from air pollution" by
thousands of power plants, oil refineries and industrial facilities.
"They're going to do everything they can not only to roll these rules
back at the federal level but to force states to dismantle clean air
programs that have been in place for years," she said.
The changes were sought by the utility, coal and oil industries, and
were the subject of months of review at the White House. The electric
utility and coal industries were both major donors to Republicans for
the 2002 and 2000 elections.
Electric companies and their employees contributed at least $11
million to the GOP in the 2001-02 election cycle, more than twice as
much as they gave Democrats, according to figures compiled by the
Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks
campaign finance.
Coal companies and their employees made at least $1.9 million in
political contributions in that period, with more than $8 of every
$10 going to Republicans, the center found.
Bush's 2000 presidential campaign was also a major beneficiary of the
industries' largess. Several energy executives raised at least
$100,000 each for Bush's campaign, and the energy industry, including
electric and mining companies, gave more than $2.8 million.
Many of the fund-raisers and donors were members of Bush's transition
team, weighing in on energy and environmental policy as the president
set up his administration.
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